As John Foot noted in his obituary of Percy Allum, the outstanding historian of Italy never really played the academic game during his time as a lecturer, and eventually professor, at Reading University. When I was there as a student for three years from 1968, I encountered Dr Allum as a very striking teacher of comparative government.
Among an idiosyncratic bunch of academics in the politics department, he stood out as radical. However, his leftwing views were always subordinated to the needs of his students.
